Archives of the Invisible: untold stories, hidden traces @ dingen die niet verkopen

Within the season’s theme of Archives of the Invisible: untold stories, hidden traces,  Dingen Die Niet Verkopen exhibits artworks that contain stories that would otherwise remain untold. Which narrative can a product reveal and in which way can an object activate these stories? For this third edition of their yearly group expo they work together with Disarming Design Palestine.

Vernissage : Thursday december 5th, 18h – 21h.
Open on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 14h to 18h.
Finissage : Sunday december 22nd with a Reading about Disarming Design from Palestine by Sulaiman Saleh en Ibrahim Muhtadi at 15h.

postcards for palestine

A sentence of the poem I wrote for the Ticker Tape Parade, initiated by NICC, is silkscreened onto a filmstill. This postcard was created for the Postcards For Palestine initiative.

Shown at Berlinskej Model Gallery (CZ) + Claire de Rouen (UK) + Venice Biennale (IT) in a collab with Arts of the Working Class & Artists + Allies x Hebron.

ticker tape parade @ Antwerp Art Weekend & Platform Project Athens

Ticker Tape Parade

Antwerp Art Weekend (BE) & Platform Projects Athens (GR)

18.05.2023 – 31.10.2023

with

UNREALIZED PROJECTS by PANSION PROJECTS @ PROJECT SPACE FESTIVAL

“Unrealized projects” is a presentation of the project (Unreleased ideas) that Pansion Projects is currently working on. The project “Unreleased ideas” is about unfinished projects, ideas that were never to be realized. Either because of limited resources or financial reasons or just simply because the artist lost interest after some time. In this project we are trying to create a narrative out of these “Unreleased ideas” to bring about the raw material: The unassembled play-sets that were never assembled and are now presented as scattered pieces for the reader to put together.

The “Unreleased ideas” will be presented in a one-day exhibition and will after be published as a book.

APPLES AND ORANGES BOOK FAIR

Level Five goes to Apples & Oranges

2/10/21, C-Mine Genk

Apples & Oranges is an artist-focused fair, foregrounding individual artists and collectives who approach publishing as an artistic practice. The event’s title alludes to the incomparable diversity of different forms that come under the umbrella term of ‘artists’ books’. Apples & Oranges creates a platform where artists can meet and present, sell, or swap their work. It is as much a commercial opportunity as an occasion to network, create new connections, and exchange ideas on what (self)publishing as an artistic practice may mean today.

GENERATION BRUSSELS @ BRUSSELS GALLERY WEEKEND

Generation Brussels @ Brussels Gallery Weekend

9-12/09/21, Centre Tour à Plomb

Since 2018, Brussels Gallery Weekend and its galleries support the young Brussels artists by hosting the show “Generation Brussels”. Organized by a different curator each year, the exhibition aims at highlighting young Brussels artists who have not yet been called by galleries.

For 2021, we have chosen to collaborate with Belgian Curators Dagmar Dirkx and Zeynep Kubat. They collaborated with the artists on a transdisciplinary exhibition, articulating different themes such as identity, gender, or our relationship to space and the environment, under the gaze of a new generation of Brussels artists.

With:  Karolien Chromiak, Clémentine Coupau, Thiaba Diop Egutchi, Günbike Erdemir, Eléonore Joulin, Axel Korban, Rebecca Quix, Estelle Saignes, Jean-Samuel N’Sengi, Ugo Woatzi

NONSTOP PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL @ RECYCLART BXL

NONSTOP performance festival

24/06/21, Recyclart Brussel

NONSTOP  is een performance festival gecureerd door Merzedes Šturm-Lie in Stockholm en Brussel. Voor deze editie zullen 10 kunstenaars performen. Het festival gaat door in Recyclart Brussel, zonder pauzes, elke performance wordt beklonken met het begin van een volgende.

NONSTOP est un festival de performances organisé par Merzedes Šturm-Lie à Stockholm et à Bruxelles. Pour cette édition, 10 artistes participeront avec des performances. Le festival n’a pas de pauses, chaque performance est directement suivie d’une autre.

Met: Pim Heerkens | Karolien Chromiak & Gary Farrelly | Dóra Benyó | Merzedes Sturm-Lie | Julia Droga, Loi Choi, Louise Bernatowski & Amina A.E.B | 1 Guy | Daria Szewczuk | Maarten Raskin | Cléo Totti | Milka Mbunga Kongi

COLLECTIVE WRITING

The article I wrote with Martha Claeys, Ilse Ghekiere, Anneleen Lemmens, Katrien Schaubroeck, Lotte Spreeuwenberg, Petra Van Brabandt on the myth of the strong woman has been published in “Debatfiches van de Vlaamse elite” by Robrecht Vanderveeken, published by EPO  and can be bought at De Standaard Boekhandel.

“Politiek is een wereld van taal en taal is strijd. Klassenstrijd. Bij N-VA, Vlaams Belang, Voka en hun fellow travellers zijn ze daar erg bedreven in. Het is verbazend hoeveel rechtse woorden en slogans de laatste decennia in onze hoofden zijn geslopen. Dit boek fileert de mythes, dooddoeners, frames, oneliners, hondenfluitjes en andere semantische salto’s van de vrienden van de elite. Een verklarende handleiding bij de newspeak. Want als taal voor het politiek personeel van VOKA-Vlaanderen de sleutel tot de Vlaamse identiteit is, welk wereldbeeld zit er dan achter hun eigen taal?”

blue screen online #6 Karolien Chromiak

Blue Screen Online #6 Karolien Chromiak

VOID & to glitch the home (to heal)

03.05.2021 – 16.05.2021

For the last edition of Blue Screen Online, in which we focussed on video works made by artists of Level Five, we will dive into the practice of Karolien Chromiak.

Karolien Chromiak is a Brussels based visual artist working at Level Five. She explores the connection between the digital and the natural. In her artistic research she implements the techniques of glitching and gathering in order to disrupt the hidden myths that shape our environment and to create spaces-in-between. Her multimedia practice often takes the form of mixed media installations in which natural objects and digital images form a strange, fictional environment.

Blue Screen is a monthly screening program focussing on film and video works by visual artists. The program is initiated by Chloé Malcotti and Emma van der Put and takes place at Level Five, a cooperative artist studio in the centre of Brussels.

to glitch the home (to heal) @ Kunsthal Gent

Gathering in a temporary intervention

Hosted by Karolien Chromiak & Gary Farrelly

Friday 16 april, 20:00, online gathering

Saturday 17  and Sunday 18 April, 11:00 – 18:00, temporary intervention on view in Kunsthal Gent

In German, the word “heim” is a part of the word “unheimlich”. In other words, you can’t speak about horror, without speaking about the home. When we look at the Dutch language we find the same linguistic ambiguity. The very first word that was used to refer to the home is “hol”. A hole in the ground was a place where our nomadic ancestors found shelter and hid themselves for danger. The word “hel” comes from this very same word, as it refers to a hidden world aka the underworld. Again this link between horror and the home. The word hol/hel, however, was in Old English written down as “heal”. It is precisely this what the project aims to do: to heal the home.

This project glitches the home and the position that it entails in a patriarchal late-capitalist landscape. Between the Western European witch hunts in the middle ages to Poland that currently completely banned abortion, there have been consistent attacks on our homes, the places where we find shelter. Why is it that for minority groups the concept of home is so traumatic? From the oppressiveness of social housing architecture, the position of privilege that organised nature in cities entails to the exclusion of queerness in the nuclear family, inequality is seen whenever we think of home.

During the event in Kunsthal, a temporary environment is created, a real-life shelter with a digital skin, in which Gary and Karolien will host an associative journey through the research of the project.

ticker tape parade by NICC

Ticker Tape

21.02.2021 – 22.03.2021

BOTANICC Antwerp & NICC Vitrine Brussels

Dennis Tyfus (BE) Camila Buxeda (US) Astera Mortezai (NL-IR) Benny Van den Meulengracht-Vrancx (BE) Kenny Schachter (US) Thorvaldur Thorsteinsson (IS) Slow Reading Club (US-BE-AUS) Evelin Brosi & Elvis Bonier (BE) Anne-Lise Coste (FR) Gerard Herman (BE) Frank JMA Castelyns (BE) :mentalKLINIK (BE-TUR) Perry Roberts (BE-UK) WE ARE HERE (BE-DE) Guy Rombouts (BE) Karolien Chromiak (BE) Floris Vanhoof (BE) Michèle Matyn (BE) Juan Pablo Plazas (BE-CO) Mia Imani Harrison (DE-US) Ludo Mich (BE) Ali Cabbar (BE-TUR) Julia Wlodkowski (PL) Willo Gonnissen (BE)  Floris Van Look (BE) Jelena Vanoverbeek (BE) Idris Sevenans (BE) Camille Goossens (BE) Christian Jankowski (DE-US)

Today, a physical encounter with works of art is no longer self-evident.

The exhibition ‘Ticker Tape’ invites artists to provide an immaterial and text-based work of art via wireless communication. We chose artists for whom a textual work is relevant in their oeuvre and for whom this invitation could be an artistic pleasure or a challenge. Light, color, rhythm, frequencies, language, and symbols are used to convey these artistic interventions. They are also intertwined between two devices and two spaces. This project aims to explore other networks, methods, channels, and visual strategies to connect art and artists with the public.

29 artists were chosen. Every day at noon one of the selected artworks will be uploaded on two LED screens and will run for 24h simultaneously in our Antwerp and Brussels locations. Both LED-screens can be seen from the streets, and we post them on a daily basis on our social media (Instagram & Facebook) and website.

Ticker tape machines are a forerunner of the modern computer-controlled printer, it was the first technique to transfer text remotely to a printing device. Concept: Cel Crabeels, board member NICC, Production: Lina Ejdaa, Philippe Van Damme.

supported by the Flemish government and the city of Antwerp

collective writing

Martha Claeys, Ilse Ghekiere, Anneleen Lemmens, Katrien Schaubroeck, Lotte Spreeuwenberg, Petra Van Brabandt and me wrote an article on exclusive spaces for womxn, published in De Standaard 27/1  and an article on the myth of the strong womxn published in De Morgen 28/1.

“The battle has not been fought until there is equality for all womxn. Also for trans women, fat women, black women, poor women, sick women, housewives, Muslim women, sex workers, lesbian women, women with disabilities, single mothers … For women who don’t break through the glass ceiling. (…) For all women whose bodies remind them daily that injustice is real.”

Sub Rosa

I was invited by Frederiek Weda (Galerie Bernau (DE)) to take part in the “Sub Rosa” series. I’m presenting the research of my new project-in-progress, “to glitch the home (to heal)”. The intervention will take the form of an Instagram takeover, 11 – 15 January 2021. I’m also showing the first moving images of the project in the vitrine of the gallery space. Feel free to follow the intervention, on- and/or offline!

Under the term “Sub Rosa” (“under four eyes”), interventions by artists take place parallel to Galerie Bernaus exhibition program “The Art of Peace“. “Sub Rosa” presents works that are in the process of being created and offers a moment of attention in the public sphere. The works deals with trust, intimacy and self-doubt. The interventions move in the public space, outside the exhibition space in the institutional periphery: in the courtyard, on the website, on Instagram & Facebook or the gallery’s newsletter.

of womxn and other weeds

I was invited by Liza Prins and Layla Durrani to write a text on glitching, gathering and healing for their amazing publication “Of womxn and other weeds”. You can order this magical piece from February on, or visit Art Rotterdam (NL) where the official presentation will take place.

radio level five

Radio Level Five in conversation with Karolien Chromiak

In Karolien Chromiak‘s work, the layering of (so-called) artificial and natural elements and media are joined to create something new yet familiar, the meaning and sensation of which is one focus in the current interview. Lately, this way of working added up to a spatial installation involving all senses. From there our talk moves on to touch notions of landscape, capitalism, witch circles, digital glitching, and finally: home.

Interviewed by Bas Blaasse and Olaf Winkler.

You can listen to the conversation here.

V O I D

02.10 – 10.10.2020

rottstr5-kunsthallen

curated by mentalspacegallery

V O I D is a research project that is initiated by Karolien Chromiak _ curated by mentalspacegallery (Roman Zheleznyak) _ exhibited in Rottstr5-Kunsthallen Bochum (DE) _ digital images by Arno Ringoet _ sounddesign and video by Jorn Plucieniczak _ with help from Stefanie Salzmann and Toon Straetemans _ with the support of the Flemish Government and Innogy Stiftung (DE)

THE FEMALE HAZE(d)

THE FEMALE HAZE(d) is a multidisciplinary program focussed on female artists, curated by Maryam Kamal Hadayat & Argos arts, taking place at Decoratelier. Exhibition, screenings and aftertalk with Engagement Arts and Wanda collective.

VOID @ Cashmere Radio Berlin

The research project VOID, initiated by me and curated by Roman Zheleznyak (mentalspace) was  delayed to autumn due to Covid-19. In the meantime, Sarah Johanna Teurer gave us the opportunity to talk about the project on Cashmere radio.

In this show we discuss atmospheric materials, disenchantment and glitches. The result is a uniquely strange interaction between me and Roman intertwined with spoken words samples and ambient music. From the unheard voices to magic, back to raving and the concept of an exhibition.

You can listen to the show here.

Youtube artspace _ A Fair New World

qp|| will be streamed in the Youtube artspace during A Fair New World, an event hosted by SOTA, Kunstenpunt & Het Theaterfestival. Within this trajectory is investigated how the new reality can be designed in a fair and inclusive way.

OVERLAP_The no man’s land between Art & Science

OVERLAP wishes to explore the field between art and science. Artists and scientists share an unbridled curiosity to understand, explain and even change the world around us.

The Young Academy searched for connections, synergies, and conflicts between contemporary artistic and scientific practices. The exploration of this borderland – the overlap – between science and art resulted in a ‘paper exhibition’ with 52 artistic contributions and 12 essays, matching the rhythm of a calendar year.

Each contribution offers a unique perspective in a dialogue that does not result in an unambiguous picture. This in-between area is a challenging no man’s land where different rules and vocabularies coexist. This friction can be inspiring and allow for the unexpected. Can this be the key to gain access to that which lies beyond the borders of our current knowledge?

The wilderness hidden underneath

The poetry of the error, the aesthetic of the mistake, the battered translation from the analogue to the digital and vice versa. The moment when a system derails and strays from its particular path. ‘The wilderness hidden underneath’ shows the work of visual artists who investigate, manipulate and purify these crashes, bugs, errors, feedback and noise.

With work by:
Benjamin Verhoeven
Eva Vermeiren
Elias Heuninck
Karolien Chromiak
Liselotte Van Daele
Naama Roth
Stien Bekaert
Seppe De Meyere

Curated by Maarten Vanermen
Photography by Silvia Cappellari

THE LAST MEETING

A gathering on computational governance.

The gathering is an intense 10 day think tank, where theoretical discussions are interlaced with practical assignments. Our focus is on reflection, process and collaboration. The end-goal is an exhibition and a publication.

Opening: 20_07, 11u – 18u
tour starts at 16u
Verbeke Foundation, Westakker

Participants: * Aaron-Victor Peeters * Andrew Scheinman * Ans Mertens * Armen Aramyan * Benjamin Spalding * Camille Bédard * Erika Brandl Mouton * Erin Helsen + Hazel * Karolien Chromiak * Lies De Laet * Lodewijk Heylen * Nastya Podorozhnya * Rik Peeters * Michelle Standley

+6 GAIN_RAVE

We organize the Belgian avant-premiere of the short film ‘+6 Gain’ followed by a rave in the basements of the old mining building building in Waterschei, Genk.

5_7, 22:00 – end // get in touch for more info

BIËNNALE VAN BELGIË

Festival van Belgische hedendaagse kunst // Festival d’art contemporain Belge

Opening: Friday 21_06, 17u – 23u
Floraliënhal Ghent (behind SMAK)
On view until 30_06, 13u – 23u

Collectives: Diesel Project Space, La Superette, Social Harmony, Platitude, Nadar, In De Ruimte

TIME & SPACE, HERE & NOW

Level Five

Level Five is an artist run cooperative studio floor located just steps from the Beurs/Bourse in Brussels. On the fifth level about 75 artists share a floor which houses individual and shared studio’s, a shared desk area, a shared kitchen, and common spaces.

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